All entries for Friday 05 October 2007

October 05, 2007

The IT Crowd is a show that gets a lot of stick from pretty much everywhere. Mostly because it invloves Graham Lineham and isn’t as good as Father Ted, or because it involves Richard Ayeode and isn’t as good as Garth Marehngi. And at it’s heart it’s a very old fashioned sit-com, ironically being obstenisbly about modern technology. The first season was more hit and miss, but it wasn’t bad – it didn’t make you cringe at the sheer cheek and awfulness of it like The Catherine Tate show or Bo Selecta. It just provided a pleasant and enjoyable enough twenty minutes or so of comedy. Season Two follows a simmilar path, but throughout the writing is just a little sharper, the characters slightly more three-dimensional. Sure, Roy is still a misanthrope, Moss an innocent genius and Jen a ditzy female stereotype but nevertheless the actors make the most of them. On the whole it’s a little better than season one. Except for episode four. Episode four follows the trend of this series of taking our three main characters outside the basement and office to more exciting locales, meaning we get a lot more ‘geek meets outside world’ driven laughs. Episode four brings us to Jen’s house, where she’s hosting a dinner party for her ‘normal’ friends, and has ended up having to invite Roy and Moss along. And this episode brilliantly turns the entire premise of the show on it’s head: you expect Roy and Moss’ weird behaviour to cause laughs and embarassing situations, but instead the show takes the route of showing how normal they are comparative to Jen’s also sterotypical friends. It works brilliantly and it’s just beautifully observed. If all episodes of The IT Crowd had been like this, I’d be heartily commending it. As it is, it’s still mostly average with one episode that stands out by a mile. If you happen to spot Series 2, Episode 4 being repeated at any point, be sure to give it a watch.